Not a long time ago I posted twice asking for answers to some issues I encountered in H4. Most of those issues are now resolved (you helped me, or I figuered them out myself), but one bothered me so much that I tested it thouroughly myself (since no valid answer was given). This issue is the units' order of play in combat - more particularly, their order of play when they are of same speed.
While testing I admit that I was a bit surprised how complicated this actualy is (to me at least). I think I now understand how this works in H4 - however I am not really sure will I be able to express myself in an efficient way so that you can easily understand me but I will do my best. I will set out the entire principles of play order, with all factors affecting it, eventhough Gus Smetstad already wrote some of the rules, which Vlaad quoted in my Morale/Luck post.

Every round is composed of two phases: normal and wait phase. More so, we can divide every phase into three sections: good morale section, neutral morale section and bad morale section.

The general order of play is such:

For Normal phase:
Creatures/heroes which got good morale, in decreasing order of speed.
Creatures/heroes which got normal morale, in decreasing order of speed.
Creatures which got bad morale, in decreasing order of speed.

For wait phase:
Creatures/heroes which got bad morale and waited, in increasing order of speed.
Creatures/heroes which got normal morale and waited, in increasing order of speed.
Creatures/heroes which got good morale and waited, in increasing order of speed.

So far I think this is easily understood. Problem arises when there are 2 or more creatures with the same speed in any section of any round. In that case, three general factors are considered: attacker formation, defender formation, and slot positions of units of same speed.

Important: all that is written below is applied to Normal phase. In Wait phase, things are simply reversed.

If you look at the advanture screen, you will see that your army is composed of two rows of slots where your units are displayed: the upper row has 4 slots, and the lower has 3. Your army can execute three different formations: tight, loose and square. However, the order of play is dependent on the formation. Now, presume the following slot numbers:

For tight/loose formation the postions of units are
1 2 4 6
3 5 7

For square formation the positions of units are
1 3 5 7
2 4 6

How does this affect your order of play? For purpose of simplicity I will assume that morale never arises. Imagine the following example: you army is composed of 7 stacks of angels, and you are fighting 7 stacks of pikemen (or any other unit of lower speed).
In the case if you are the attacker, your angels (which are all of same speed) will execute their turn based on the slot they are placed into, and the formation of your army, starting from number 1 to number 7. They will all get their turn before the pikemen simply because they are all faster. The interesting point here is that the order of play is changed by formation you have selected.
In the case if you are the defender, however, your angels will still all play before the pikemen, however they will not play from 1 to 7, but the opposite, from 7 to 1! So we can make a general rule here: If two or more units are of the same speed and in the same army, the unit with the lower number gets to play first if the army is the attacker; vice versa, the unit with the higher number gets to play first if the army is the defender.

There are exceptions to this, but they will be considered below.

Consider another example, or Gedankenexperiment : imagine the same army of 7 angels, but this time you are fighting an army which is also composed of 7 angels. In this case, at the beginning, you have two units (angels) of the same speed in the same importance slot (1 for the attacker, 7 for the defender). This situation is resolved by the following rule:In the beginning of the round, if there are 2 or more units in attacker's or both armies with the same speed, the attacker with the lowest number will always get to play first.

So, this will be true even if the attacker has only one stack of angels in any other position but 1. He is the attacker, and he will always play first.

In general for the case with 7 vs. 7 angels, the unit order will be as such (A-attacker, D-defender):
1A 7D 2A 6D 3A 5D 4A 4D 5A 3D 6A 2D 7A 1D
So, the units alternate until the round is over.

Another example: imagine that the attacker has angels in slot 7, pikemen in 6, and the defender has only pikemen in 1. First, the angels, being the fastest unit get to play first. However, if we follow the rule above, the attacking pikemen should get to play before the defending pikemen (because 6A comes sooner than 1D) - but you guessed, this is not so. There is another rule here:If 2 or more units are of the same speed, and they are NOT the highest speed to play in the round, the first unit to play will be the attacker if the defending unit has acted just before, or defender if the attacking unit has acted just before.

So, in this case, the attacking unit has acted just before, and this rule outmatches the slot position of attacking pikemen. Therefore, the unit order is 1. angels, 2. defending pikemen, 3. attacking pikemen.

Another example (only two more ): imagine that the attacker has angels in slot 1, pikemen in slots 6 and 7; defender has pikemen in slots 6 and 7. Angels get to play first, that is clear. According to rules above, defending pikemen in slot 7 play next. But, what now? Who plays next, 6D, or 6A? It should be 6D if we follow the order of play (slotwise) when we had 7 vs. 7 angels case, but this is not so.In the case of 3 or more units with the same speed in opposing armies, after it is resloved which of them plays first, the order of play simply alternates. If it was the attacker to play first, it is followed by defender, than attacker, defender etc. until all units of the same speed have acted. And vice versa if it was the defender that played first.

And now the last a bit more realistic example, but it is still made up for testing purposes, you can try to figure out the order of play by yourselves by applying the rules above.

Well, I hope that at least expert H4 players will enjoy reading this. I think it is of uttermost importance for top play - me and my friends are already playing some very serious games (I wouldn't say that we can compare to the best, but we are improving) and already two games have been decided by order of play tactics.

I found that very interesting. I have to admit that, discounting morale and speed, I thought that the "who goes first" was random, and random for each round. That is, in fact, one reason why I find battles interesting: with exactly the same troops on both sides, my experience appears to be that quite different things happen, and the order of play can be a deciding factor in who wins, especially where spellcasters are involved.

The campaign I hope to have ready soon uses powerful Nature mages. They have virtually no troops, so if they can't summon phoenixes or similar on the first turn, a relatively small number of dragons or angels quickly wipes them out. If your theory is correct, I shall have to pay a lot more attention to positioning my troops.

Well, I tested all of those examples, so the results are real. Ofcourse, the conclusions came from my own logic, and could be false - I'll have to force myself to make a few more tests. Although, I would be surprised if I am wrong, I would say that the slot positions are most certainly a factor, especialy since in the last test the results agree with the theory.
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I'm glad you're going to do more tests and look forward to the results. I was not in any way trying to suggest that you were wrong, by the way. If you are correct, then it will certainly affect my game play.

It's actually good these things are collected someplace accessible. The info can be found - scattered around - on the round table forums (I guess in the archives). Some was posted by me, but I think it wasn't new then either. Better h4 online players just knew it. Least I guess so.

No, the info can not be found on Round Table, I checked it out. I read I think all of your posts on the issue on both forums (which were mostly extremely useful to me), but I was unable to find something related to this issue in details I elaborated. Most of those posts concern turn order in respect with morale and speed, but NOT when identical speeds arise. I don't know do the best H4 players know these facts: if they don't, they're not really the best players . Since I got so little feedback, I can't judge on the matter - I guess that really means that H4 community is dead for the most part.
However, if I am free to make an analogy: long time ago I spoke with some of the best players in the world in H3 (Russians mostly) about one detail, which were the specifics of 2-breath attack (I think I posted something about that somewhere here), and it turned out that some of them really never gave much thought of it. So, there are always new things to learn, even if you are the best.
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Quote:No, the info can not be found on Round Table, I checked it out. I read I think all of your posts on the issue on both forums (which were mostly extremely useful to me), but I was unable to find something related to this issue in details I elaborated. Most of those posts concern turn order in respect with morale and speed, but NOT when identical speeds arise. I don't know do the best H4 players know these facts: if they don't, they're not really the best players . Since I got so little feedback, I can't judge on the matter - I guess that really means that H4 community is dead for the most part.
However, if I am free to make an analogy: long time ago I spoke with some of the best players in the world in H3 (Russians mostly) about one detail, which were the specifics of 2-breath attack (I think I posted something about that somewhere here), and it turned out that some of them really never gave much thought of it. So, there are always new things to learn, even if you are the best.

That's because most of the stuff is on the old forums. I think some are still up in the archives, however. Some are lost I'm afraid, and I never stored them, silly me, eh?
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Yes, I play the game only on the forums.